I Am What I Am by John Barrowman (white hot kiss .TXT) 📕

tumbling across furniture. One Christmas holiday in Florida, when Clare, Turner, Scott, Mum, Dad and I were doing some last-minute shopping, we went into a shoe store, where my dad proceeded to fake-fall. Because the people in the store were so genuinely upset – and security happened to be passing at the time and attended to him immediately – he had to spend the rest of the afternoon limping in and out of every shop we visited, because he was embarrassed they might catch him in his joke. Of course, the rest of us had no sympathy for him at all.

I have to own up to one or two fake falls myself over the years. And having forged a career on television and in theatre, I’ve had access to stunt professionals who have schooled me in some of their ways, which has made me even more skilled in walking into doors, or falling over real and invisible obstacles in the street.

At the Hub convention in 2008, however, my stunt moves didn’t work out in quite the way I’d planned. Carole and I had retreated to our adjoining hotel rooms to chill before a signing session. I decided to stage a fake tumble across the room when she came to get me for the event.1 When the adjoining door started to open, I launched into action … only my foot caught on the edge of the coffee table’s top; a slab of thick black marble that was perched precariously on a flimsy balsa-wood frame. As the door swung open, I went sprawling across the floor – and the table collapsed behind me.2

I also recently scared the hell out of a hotel maid in Glasgow, when I tumbled out of the elevator and barely missed her cart full of cleaning supplies. She was truly appalled when Scott, Carole and my brother-in-law, Kevin, walked out of the lift behind me, climbed over my prostrate form,3 and kept heading to their rooms, without pausing for an instant to offer help.

So, you can see why my mum was not inclined to rush to my rescue when I fell over, poolside.

The last time I performed in the US was at the Stackner Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2002, when my cabaret sold out three nights, and I played to lots of family, friends and fans from the area. When an opportunity came up to perform in the US again, this time in Chicago as part of the Torchsong convention, taking place from 5 to 7 June 2009, I was excited to include my cabaret in the event’s programme as a special treat for my American fans.

The month of May 2009 had been a crazy, fabulous one for me. I’d performed at seventeen venues to seventeen sold-out audiences on my concert tour in the UK. As June began, I was settling into a couple of relaxing days at my house in Sully, before heading off to Chicago for the convention. My parents were staying with me, and Scott had taken a few days off. We were all lounging by the sea.

Directly after we moved into our house in Sully, Scott and I had a deck built at the end of the garden. (Scott had also, of course, found his trusty hammer within the first few days, and set about knocking down a few walls.4) The base of the deck is a couple of inches higher than the area around the pool, but the shoreline and the deck line combine to create the illusion when I’m lounging there that I’m floating out over the sea. When the weather is warm – which happens many more days than you might think on the southern coast of Wales – Scott and I regularly eat dinner out there, and cocktails when we have company5 are de rigueur on the deck.

We were midway through the cocktail hour(s) on this particular night when I picked up my mum’s glass to head inside for a refill of her Harveys Bristol Cream. In an instant, my plans for Torchsong and singing for my American fans went over the edge. I stepped off the deck and went over on my left ankle. I felt something inside snap, and I swear I heard a pop. I went down hard. The pain was instantaneous.

While I was writhing on the ground, my dogs thought I was playing games and they leapt and bounded all over me. My mum and dad thought I was playing games and they leapt and bounded all over me. Scott continued to watch the sunset.

‘Get the dogs away from me,’ I cried.

My mum finally paid attention. She leaned over me and said, ‘Stop goofing around, John. Just get up.’

‘Get the dogs away from me.’

‘Lick him! Lick him!’ she chanted.

‘Mother, I’m serious!’

It wasn’t until she looked down and saw how much my ankle was already swelling – to at least twice its size in the few seconds I’d been writhing – that she and my dad believed that this was not a prank. I really was injured.

‘It’s those damn flip-flops,’ my mum cried. ‘I don’t understand why you wear them. They’re an accident waiting to happen.’

My dad and Scott helped me off the ground and out to the car. This move was made doubly difficult because Charlie, Jack and Harris thought the entire event was a game, and kept nipping and grabbing at my injured ankle.

In considerable pain, I made it to the emergency room, where I learned that I had pulled tendons and torn ligaments in my left ankle. Until the swelling went down, I was told there’d be no flying, and for four weeks I was permitted only limited movement on crutches, with my ankle encased in what I called a ‘Beckham boot’ cast.

When we got home from the ER, my mum felt so bad that she had not believed me right away that she immediately headed into the kitchen and made a pot of my favourite home-made chicken soup. After I’d eaten